If we lose the appeal, Ireland gets a windfall of 13bn, or about 2,600 per person. This is enough to wipe out our budget deficit for years to come, spend on what we will, or use in another way, which I will explain a bit later.

If we lose, we will be seen by corporate America as its only friend in Europe. This is exactly where we want to be. It is not pretty, nor heroic, but it's realpolitik. When you have no capital base, you have to borrow someone else's. How do you do that? You make the place attractive for other people's money and you do that by taxing it modestly. It's time for Ireland to think strategically in a post-EU world. Now Official Ireland will be getting its knickers in a twist over the admonishing from the EU Commission, but that's because Official Ireland is captured and is pathetically insecure about our place in the world.

The "good room" mentality permeates the political corridors of power, where they care about what the EU apparatchiks think of us. We are constantly trying to please them, when we should realise that they are coming after us. Remember, no EU functionaries ever created a single job in Ireland. They don't matter in reality.

The last sentence is classic Eurosceptic bull. The EU "functionaries" who created the EU and single market are the reason the global multi-nationals come to Ireland in the first place.